The Moment: A Selection

“When we got to the palace our group lined up to enter the building. I found myself last in line, and as we climbed the stairs, I noticed a bathroom just inside on the left. Swiftly, I walked in alone.”

In 1989, the people of Romania overthrew Communist leader Nicolae Ceausescu. For Romanians, the ousting of Ceausescu, known for his brutal and repressive regime, was a drastic change in a country that for half a century had been shut off from the Western world. Ten years earlier, however, during a cruise down the Danube River in 1979, writer Attila Kalamar discovered at the young age of 17 that he’d already had enough of his native Romania. In that moment, he decided to make his own drastic change. Listen to the story here.